News Briefs

Danone North America is investing in its advanced manufacturing capabilities, with benefits expected to help it achieve its sustainability goals.  

The company is spending $65 million over the next two years to open a new bottle production line in Jacksonville, Fla. The location is expected to provide increased flexibility across bottle design, accelerated sustainability initiatives, lower costs, and advanced operational excellence. 

Production for Danone’s coffee and creamer brands, such as International Delight, Silk, and STok, will reap the rewards, which include reduced water consumption, decreased carbon emissions, and improved packaging circularity. 

• Also: Kraft Heinz, Danone Invest In First-Party Data Collaboration

The new facility will create 40 full-time jobs with attractive benefits such as 18 weeks of paid time off for childbirth or adoptions. This follows ongoing trends in the CG space to provide increased flexibility and amenities in the workplace to increase retention rates.

Mike Sloboda, Danone North America's chief operations officer, said the investment will enable it to better serve its customers and operate more efficiently and sustainably, while Shane Grant, group deputy CEO, CEO Americas at Danone, expects it to allow the company to capitalize on consumer demand in key beverage categories, supporting Danone’s long-term growth strategies.

Italian specialty food manufacturer Colavita USA is updating its inventory management, warehousing, and fulfillment with elevated DTC e-commerce technology. 

The company will be outsourcing its third-party logistics, leveraging an e-commerce solutions partnership with Boxed within a fully automated fulfillment center in Union, NJ. 

• See Also: DTC's Shifting Fit in the Consumer Insights Puzzle

Through the collaboration, Colavita solidifies its e-commerce distribution in the U.S. The company is a major supplier for HelloFresh and also imports products like extra virgin olive oil, vinegars, pastas, and sauces across the U.S.

“Our relationship with Boxed as a vendor has always been strong. We are beyond excited to expand that synergy to include their supply chain and fulfillment expertise,” said Giovanni Colavita, CEO of Colavita USA.

Renfro Brands – who represent companies such as Polo, Sperry, Jeep, Dr. Scholls, and HOTSOX  – have announced plans to build on sustainability efforts through fresh investment in product traceability software. 

The Stockholm-based fashion and retail brand has picked supply chain traceability tech provider TrusTrace to spearhead the effort, with plans to use the platform to centralize their current supply chain data and ensure their operations remain in line with the latest compliance laws. The sock and legwear retail brand will also use the platform to track the impact of their current sustainability efforts, document progress, reduce risks, and gain greater visibility into their overall value chain. 

• See Also: Building the Supply Chain of the Future: 5 Consumer Goods Companies Investing in Innovative Approaches

Renfro Brands has been making a concerted effort to improve supply chain visibility in recent years. Among their current goals, Renfro Brands say they hope to use sustainable yarns and materials in 100% of the products by 2030. At the moment, 30% of Renfro’s packaging components are also recyclable or reusable and again, the goal is to bring this up to 100% by 2030.

Commenting on the news, Jonah Buelin, Renfro Brand's SVP of supply chain, outlined how the TrusTrace platform would help the brand “standardize how our supply chain mapping and material tracing data is captured, digitized and shared.”

L’Oreal has announced plans to build out their cloud-based retail execution strategy, expanding their current roll-out plans to include the brand’s Morocco division.

The beauty company have branched out their partnership with StayinFront to deploy their TouchCG apps to field representatives in Morocco. The Retail Optimization platform uses algorithms and artificial intelligence to pinpoint the highest value stores and directs representatives for visits using advanced routing technology.

Once in store, high value displays and products are highlighted on screen, via an app, for representatives to focus on. StayinFront's data warehouses, KPIs, and BI tools measure the outcomes gathered, which are then fed back into the platform and used to inform future algorithmic decisions. 

See Also: L’Oreal and PepsiCo Launch Innovative Packaging and Labeling Strategies

The brand believe the expanded partnership will better allow representatives to efficiently complete tasks, monitor compliance and best practices, set goals, and identify trends based on what they record in store. StayinFront’s also platform integrates with L’Oreal’s existing store distribution platform to take in-store orders, gather data, and offer recommendations. 

Commenting on the expanded partnership, Alex Sangyong CHO, sales and marketing IT director at L’Oréal North Asia & SAPMENA praised StayinFront’s AI and machine learning technologies that have allowed the brand to fuel their global digital transformation and drive retail growth. 

Fashion brand Karl Lagerfeld is automating allocation across its network, tapping artificial intelligence to streamline inventory management.

The company is working with supply chain planning software ToolsGroup to improve customer satisfaction, elevate sell-through potential, and increase financial performance by expediting the planning process, reducing inaccuracies, and fine-tuning forecasts to ensure ideal stock placement. 

Timothy Justin Dreijer, senior vice president of retail, supply chain and operations, IT and legal affairs at Karl Lagerfeld, said the company was looking to implement a solution that would prepare it for its current and future business growth goals. 

“The fact that these solutions are backed by services teams who explain technical concepts in easily digestible ways and communicate openly and clearly only bolstered our confidence in this partnership,” added Dreijer.

“Today’s supply chains have the potential to be differentiators in the market. Innovative retailers understand that realizing this potential depends on powerfully simple AI solutions that enable optimal decisions at the speed of business,” said ToolsGroup CEO, Inna Kuznetsova.  

Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) Netherlands hopes to avoid out-of-stocks and overstocks with a new investment in assortment optimization. 

The bottling company, which serves 600 million consumers and has 1.75 million customers across 29 countries, has tapped SymphonyAI Retail CPG’s technology to improve supply chain efficiencies and better align its assortments with shopper behavior. The technology is designed to enable CCEP to rationalize SKUs based on existing data on aggregated customer preferences while protecting shopper privacy.

• See also: Hormel Foods Beefs Up Retail & Supply Chain Real-Time Data Sharing to Improve OSA

It enables the company to prioritize customer engagement at the point of sale and leverage data science to improve the bottom line, according to Job Rombout, head of category management, CCEP Netherlands. 

“In the pilot phase, we saw powerful initial results from the science," he said in a statement, "and we are excited to now bring measurable business impact in a real-world environment with a strategic retail customer.”